How to Make Summer Learning Programs Equitable
Prioritizing Educational Equity in Summer School
This year, summer learning program enrollment is expected to be on the rise across the country. Ensuring that these summer learning opportunities are truly equitable is a chief concern among district leaders, who recognize that the summer months could be a major contributor in closing the equity gap that COVID-19 widened over the past academic year.
The summer months naturally provide opportunities for creative, explorative, and flexible instructional activities. Summer learning programs also provide natural avenues for partnerships between schools, local communities, and families.
What makes summer learning equitable in the wake of a pandemic?
Embracing the nature of the season, the opportunities for collaboration, and students’ connections to home and community may hold a critical role in ensuring summer programs are equitable, particularly considering the learning loss and emotional strain inflicted by the pandemic. The Learning Policy Institute and Spencer Foundation wrote the following in their 2021 report on summer learning and equity:
“Research on the science of learning and development indicates that intensive remediation alone will not meet students’ needs and — if conducted in a way that is segregating, stigmatizing, and separated from children’s real-life concerns — could even deepen inequalities and exacerbate trauma.” (Bang et al., 2021, p. 1)
The Learning Policy Institute’s report asserts that relationships, culture, and engagement must be at the center of summer learning this year, and suggests that educators work with families, pay close attention to students’ interests, and cultivate an environment for belonging (Bang et al., 2021).
Communicate with Families and Share Resources
Family engagement is one of the most important elements for summer learning, and can take a variety of forms.
- The editors at Chalkbeat cite attendance as a major obstacle for many summer programs and suggests that schools communicate directly with families to determine what barriers prevent students from getting to summer school, and offering flexible schedules or transportation (Barnum, 2021).
- When using technology for summer learning, consider sending information home about the program to ensure that parents can help students login and use the technology. For example, when planning a summer math program using ALEKS, an adaptive learning tool, district math leader Alva White sent home students’ ALEKS username and password to all parents. (Read more on her story here).
- Parents can be valuable partners in ensuring that students are exploring and growing at home. Providing parents with free resources for remote learning is an excellent way to empower them to be collaborators (and have fun with their young learners!). Consider sharing resources like this new science podcast for kids and parents, or the printable resources on our at-home educational activities page.
Get Creative with Social and Emotional Learning
Summer programs offer an opportunity to get creative with approaches to SEL and provide students with room to explore and grow.
- Education Week reporters interviewed leaders from a Pittsburg district that partnered with the local children’s hospital when determining key factors in social and emotional development for their summer program (Ujifusa, 2021). Partnerships that prioritize perspectives from community leaders are critical to equitable SEL instruction.
- Skylar Primm, who teaches at an Environmental Charter School, sees a strong connection between social and emotional learning and the outdoors, and takes his students outside to exercise various SEL competencies — a strategy for summer programs that addresses the needs of learners in a flexible, engaging environment.
How can summer learning programs address academic learning loss in an equitable way?
It’s critical that academic, social, emotional, cultural, and other components of whole child development be treated as interrelated, not separate. Forging connections with students and cultivating engagement is intrinsically related to better understanding and addressing all students’ academic needs. The Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) reviewed the summer school plans for 100 urban and large districts in an April 2021 report, and found that districts’ plans were lacking in a few key areas, including high-dosage tutoring (one-to-one or very small group tutoring), and emphasized the importance of personalized learning in summer programs (Pitts, 2021).
Here are few key areas to focus on making academic gains over the summer while maintaining a focus on relationships and whole child education:
Promote Student Engagement and Agency
Student engagement is key over the summer, especially after a difficult and complicated school year. Inquiry-based learning and prioritizing student voice and choice are powerful tools to keep students engaged, and ensure all students have the opportunity to display their growth.
- Project-based learning has an important role in summer programs. The team at Getting Smart suggests prioritizing PBL specifically during summer school due to an Edutopia study that demonstrated learning gains as a result of PBL across socioeconomic subgroups (Martin, 2021).
- The Learning Policy Institute’s 2021 report suggests that educators center inquiry-based learning over the summer in order to spark curiosity in all learners, reveal how students come to conclusions about the world, and make deeper learning accessible. The report reads:
“All students deserve the opportunity to be treated as creative thinkers and makers. Learning should be an opportunity for play and authentic meaning-making, with the focus on how students are learning instead of drilling content in isolation.” (Bang et al., 2021, p. 12)
- When selecting learning technology for a summer program, consider adaptive technology that allows students to choose what they want to learn next. In this white paper, educators at the RCMA charter school, a non-profit that provides early education for children of migrant farm workers and low-income families throughout Florida, explain that their students enjoy the adaptive math program ALEKS because it allows them to decide which skill they want to work on next.
Use Technology to Personalize Instruction
Personalized learning is critical for an equitable summer program — and in many ways, all of the strategies listed above contribute to a personalized approach to learning. In order to bring personalization to scale and leave creative space for educators to foster relationships, consider the role of technology in summer learning.
- Adaptive technology identifies individual students’ learning gaps and delivers instruction to address those specific growth areas. While technology is no substitute for a teacher, highly effective adaptive technologies function in many ways like a 1:1 tutor, which, as established by the CRPE report, is a gap for many districts’s summer programs. For examples of adaptive technology that could be leveraged during summer programs, review ALEKS for math, Redbird for ELA and Math, and Rise for 3–8 ELA and Math.
- Technology can also fill gaps for personalized learning in relation to accessibility. ALEKS has been a powerful tool for Harmony Public Schools in Texas, because it allows Spanish-speaking students to switch back and forth between Spanish and English within the program. While using ALEKS in the 2016–2017 school year, 96 percent of eighth-grade students passed the state test to move on to high school, and 94 percent of Harmony’s English Learners passed that same test. ALEKS is a great fit for summer programs, and commonly used to bridge gaps over the summer months.
From tutoring to family engagement, equitable summer learning should be about people — about connections, relationships, growth, and empathy. It should also be about personalization, and about leveraging connections with students to better address their academic, social and emotional growth areas in a learning modality that suits their comfort and needs.
The right technology, curriculum, and environment can all set a foundation that ensures students work toward the content proficiency they need while making room for teachers to focus on strengthening relationships and empowering every learner.
References
Bang, M., Bricker, L., Darling-Hammond, L., Edgerton, A. K., Grossman, P., Gutiérrez, K. D., Ishimaru, A., Klevan, S., Lee, C. D., Miyashiro, D., Suad Nasir, N., Noguera, P. A., Payne, C., Penuel, B., Plasencia, S., & Vossoughi, S. (2021, April). Summer Learning and Beyond: Opportunities for Creating Equity. Learning Policy Institute. https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/summer-learning-creating-equity-report.
Barnum, M. (2021, March 30). Summer school programs are set to grow. Here are 6 tips for making them successful.Chalkbeat. https://www.chalkbeat.org/2021/3/30/22359131/summer-school-covid-stimulus-lessons-best-practices-strategies-research.
Martin, K. (2021, March 30). Strategies and Considerations When Designing for Summer Learning. Getting Smart. https://www.gettingsmart.com/2021/04/strategies-and-considerations-when-designing-for-summer-learning/.
Pitts, C. (2021, April 20). The summer puzzle: Summer plans to date are lacking in key areas. https://www.crpe.org/thelens/summer-puzzle-summer-plans-date-are-lacking-key-areas.
Ujifusa, A. (2021, April 27). How Educators Are Approaching Summer Learning This Year. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/leadership/how-educators-are-approaching-summer-learning-this-year/2021/04.
